I just read a program from Aidan's Funeral Mass(we didn't make it), I thought you guys would like this, it was the opening comments
I am standing on the seashore. A ship at my side, spreads his white sails to the moving breeze and starts for the blue ocean, He is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch him until, at length, he hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other. Then some one at my side says, " There he is gone." Gone where? gone from my sight. That is all. He is just as large in mast, hull and spar as he was when he left my side. And he is just as able to bear his load of living freight to his destined port. His diminished size is in me-not in him. And just at the moment when someone says, "There he is gone," there are other eyes watching him coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout. "Here he comes" And that is dying...
Henry Van Dyke
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